Churn

Churn refers to the number of payments lost each month through payments failing. For recurring payments, a churn rate of 5% means annoying, or even losing, 50 out of 1000 customers every month.

Failure rates

Support

Credit cards

Do it yourself

Setting everything up yourself from scratch +

5-10%

Do it yourself

Direct Access: If you manage Direct Debit payments in-house you are likely to have issues with unnecessarily high failure rates. This is because it can take a while to get processes for generating payment submissions and handling failures set up for all potential outcomes.

Direct Debit bureau: With a bureau, failure rates are usually around 1%. What's more, some bureaus like FastPay and Smartdebit may offer some help dealing with payment failures.

1-3%

Do it yourself

Managing everything yourself through a bank or a bureau +

Payments service provider

A full service payment provider +

5-10%

2-3%

Management software

A full featured software suite +

Payment processor

A combined merchant account and payment gateway +

5-10%

0.5%

The UK's leading Direct Debit provider +

Payment failures mean a poor experience for all affected users and increase the likelihood of customers churning.

You've worked hard to get customers and you don't want to lose them due to expired cards. Look for a provider who can help you keep payment failures and churn to a minimum.

Direct Debit is the clear winner with failure rates of
1-3% vs 5-10% for cards; with GoCardless the industry leader on 0.5%

Credit cards

Do it yourself

Setting everything up yourself from scratch +

Do it yourself

If you set everything up yourself, you will need to keep on top of payment failures and chargebacks yourself. However, some payment gateways do offer services to help reduce or manage churn: